The invention relates generally to estimating fume amount and content of welding or other fume-producing processes.
A wide range of industrial, commercial, hobby and other applications result in fumes or airborne components. Metal working operations, for example, range from cutting, welding, soldering, assembly, and other processes that may generate smoke, fumes, particulates, or other airborne components. In other settings, such as machine shops, paint shops, woodworking shops, worksites where cutting, sanding and other operations are performed, dust, fumes, particulate and other types of airborne components may be generated.
Systems have been developed to measure the composition of fumes, or the presence of and concentration of airborne components in the air from inside a welder's mask, on the operator's person, or in and around the work area. However, these systems are expensive and complex. Additionally, such measurement systems are not available to operators performing work operations outside of a traditional workshop or factory setting (e.g., performing a welding operation outdoors using a truck-mounted welding system, painting the exterior of a house, cutting tile for a kitchen inside a residence, a hobbyist performing a work operation in a garage, etc.). Moreover, current techniques offer little or no integration of fume-related data into an easily comprehensible form for a human operator or monitor, and similarly offer little or no analysis or synthesis of the data for one or multiple fume-generating sources.
Further improvements are needed, therefore, in determining or estimating the presence and concentration of smoke, particulate materials, or other airborne components at a given moment in a way that is less expensive and more flexible.